http://www.wsj.com/articles/taliban-fighters-launch-assault-on-afghan-city-1475492161
Taliban forces battled their way into the heart of Kunduz on Monday, rebuffing efforts by U.S.-backed government forces to defend the northern Afghan city against a coordinated assault, residents said.
The lightning offensive, which came almost a year to the day after the Islamist movement briefly seized control of the city in a similarly orchestrated attack, deals a sharp blow to efforts by the government of President Ashraf Ghani to quell the 15-year insurgency and arrest the growing insecurity that has swept the country in recent months.
In less than a day, many government offices, including the headquarters of the provincial council, fell to the insurgents, and heavy fighting was raging in many parts of the city, said Sayed Assadullah Sadat, a council member.
“The Taliban have reached to the city’s main square and taken control of it,” Akbar Farhang, a resident, said by telephone from Kunduz.
The governor’s office, along with the city’s airport and its main Afghan army base, remained in government control, Mr. Sadat and other residents said, as U.S. warplanes provided air support to Afghan troops on the ground.
Some residents were fleeing as Taliban forces advanced, Mr. Sadat said, while others had locked themselves indoors in districts of Kunduz still under government control.
“The Taliban have taken the neighborhood I live in. They are in control of half of the city,” said Mohammad Essa. “The children are frightened and everybody is so scared.”
As night fell on Afghanistan’s fourth-largest city, the situation appeared fluid and chaotic.
“The situation is bad in Kunduz,” said the provincial council chief, Mohammad Yonus Ayubi, and security officials were unable to which forces were in control on the ground.
“I don’t know what parts are controlled by the Taliban. I don’t have clue,” said Mahfouzullah Akbari, a regional police spokesman.
Earlier Monday, Mr. Akbari said Taliban fighters were hiding in civilian houses on the outskirts of Kunduz and using the inhabitants as human shields. Meanwhile, all activity in the center of the city ground to a halt.
A crucial objective of the Taliban appeared to be Bala Hesar, an ancient hilltop fortress overlooking the city and the location of a large army base.
Government officials didn’t confirm any fighting on the strategic hill but acknowledged there were heavy clashes on the city’s outskirts.
“People are worried,” said one official, who asked that his name be withheld for security reasons. “But no outpost has fallen into the Taliban hands so far, and Afghan forces are fighting very well compared with last year.”
In a similar coordinated attack that stunned the Kabul government, Taliban forces overran Kunduz on Sept. 28, 2015, the first time since the U.S.-led invasion that forced them from power in 2001 that they had taken control of a major city in the country.
They were driven out entirely almost two weeks later by government forces backed by U.S. aircraft and troops of the U.S.-led international military coalition in Afghanistan.
During the fighting, an errant U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz killed more than 40 people. The U.S. military later punished 16 officers for a chain of errors blamed for the strike.
Since it was retaken by the government, the city has remained under threat from the Taliban, with the insurgents largely in control of rural areas beyond the capital.
It wasn’t immediately known whether Mr. Ghani would continue with plans to meet with world leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels in a bid to raise more international aid for his beleaguered country. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, were among those scheduled to attend the gathering.
Kunduz, and the northern province of the same name, weren’t the only areas of Afghanistan under Taliban attack on Monday.
The insurgents overran the district of Nawa in Helmand province, killing its chief of police, said former provincial council chief Obaidullah Barakzai. With the fall of Nawa, the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, is now exposed to attacks from the south.
Helmand has seen much of Afghanistan’s worst fighting this summer and was close to collapse in August, when the Taliban repeatedly blocked main highways to Lashkar Gah, tightening a noose around the city.
@A-Team does this look like last year to you?
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![MuZammiL Dr. s[1]n](/data/avatars/s/32/32258.jpg?1370382459){kind=avatar}
